Method and machine for making globular surgical sponges



Oct. 14, 1952 H. c. RIORDAN ET AL 2,613,400

METHOD AND MACHINE FOR MAKING GLOBULAR SURGICAL SPONGES Filed D80. 14, 1946 3 Sheets-Sheet 1 Oct. 14, 1952 H: C(RIORDAN ET AL 2,513,400

METHOD AND MACHINE FOR MAKING GLOBULAR SURGICAL SPONGES Filed Dec. 14, 1946 s Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTORS. gfz jreaigf zozze' Oct. 14, 1952 H. C. RlORDAN ET AL METHOD AND MACHINE FOR MAKING GLOBULAR SURGICAL SPONGES 3 Sheets-Sheet 3 Filed Dec. 14, 1946 tion'*was the heavy carriage 126.

Patented Oct. 14, 1952 METHOD AND MACHINE FOR MAKING GLOBULAR SURGICAL SPONGES Howard C. Riordan, Oak Park, and Wilfred S. Stone, Chicago, 111.; said Stone assignor; to said Riordan Application December 14, 1946, Serial No. 71632.20

7 Claims.

This: invention relatesv to an improved method of: making that type of surgical dressing wherein, a piece of absorbent material such as cotton batting is positioned Within a porous envelope such as gauze, and for a machine for practicing this-invention. Applicant Riordan is the assign'ee of United States Patent No. 2,400,250, covering a method and machine for making such sponges.

Thespecific object of the present. invention is to eliminate the heavy movable carriage employed in the Mott machine. As explained in that application, gauze and cotton rope are limp and the inventor Mott conceived the idea of moving them downwardly with gravity in order to obtain the correct relative position of the rope to the'gauze. He further conceived the idea of then moving the cotton rope and the gauze so related into a horizontal position where the ends were severed from the main rolls of ropefiand gauze and moved thereafter into assembled relationship. The device which performed this movement of the gauze and rope from: a vertical position into a horizontal posi- For each surgical sponge made, this carriage must move around a pivot: ninety degrees and then back to the first position. This slowed the rate of operation ofl the machine.

In the present invention, the applicants fully employ Motts basic principle of feeding the cottonrope and gauze downwardly with gravity until the rope and the gauze are in the proper relative; position. At, this point, instead of moving' these elements of the surgical sponge into horizontal. position, they are severed from: the main rolls of rope and gauze while being held in proper relationhip. The cotton is then surrounded by the gauze and carried through a tube having a ninety degree bend in it and forced into the forming device on the assembling table.

The assembling device and transfer table will not be described for they are identical with that shown in the Mott Patent No. 2,400,250.

A second object of this invention is to perform this new method of forming the sponge which consists essentially of the steps of holding. the rope, severing an end section, pushing the end section against the. gauze, severing the end section of] the gauze, and then pushing both the rope r These and such other objects as may hereinafter appear are attained in the two embodiments of the invention shown in the accompanying drawings wherein:

Fig. l is a side view of a machine constituting a preferred embodiment of the invention;

Fig. 2 is an end elevation taken from the left side of Fig. l;

Fig. 3 is a view taken on the line 3-3 of Fig. 1;

Fig. 4 is a side-view of the second embodiment of the invention with the transfer-table vertically positioned.

Referring to Fig. 1, the numeral I0 identifies a base plate supported on a pedestal I2. Upon the base I0 are two side members 14 and I6 rigidly fastened to the base by brackets 18 and 20 and held in spaced relationship by cross bars such as 22 and 24. On the upper part of the side members I4 and I6 are supported vertical guideways 25- formed by pairs of spaced arms such as 26 and 28. Into these guideways may be inserted the reduced end portions such as 30 of a shaft-32 which has mounted upon it a spool of cotton gauze 34.

The spool 34 rests upona drive roller 36 mounted on the shaft 38 which carries a pinion gear 40. The end of the gauze is fed forwardly down a chute 52 between a movable knife 54 and a fixed knife 56 to a position where the swatch is centered between two tubular members 58 and 60.

The cotton rope is drawn from a container 62 through a guide 64 over a sheave 66 into the bight of a driven roller 68 and a pressure roller 10. The driven roller 68 is mounted on shaft 12 which carries gear M which is identical in size to the gear 40 on the shaft 38. A pair of likesize idler gears 18 and drivingly connect the two gears 14 and 40. It follows that shaft 12 rotates at the same speed as shaft 38. The driven roller 63 is one-half the diameter of the drive roller 36 and hence on each rotation of the drive shaft [00, while the drive roller 36 is feeding four inches of gauze, the roller 68 will feedv two inches of rope. The rope designated by the numeral 82 is fed down an oversize guide tube 84 which passes the rope between a movable knife 86 and a fixed knife 88 down to a position indicated by the numeral 90 adjacent the ring member 58'.

The left-hand end of the shaft I00 is journaled in a block 92 and carries a miter gear 9.4 in engagement with a miter gear 96 mounted on a shaft 98. The upper end of this shaft carries a miter gear I02 in engagement with the miter gear I04 mounted on the shaft I06. The ratio of the gears 34 and 96 is one to one, and the ratio of the gears I02 and I04 is one to one so that the shaft I rotates once for each rotation of the main shaft I00. This shaft carries a plurality of gear segments. The gear sector I08 has a circumferential length equal to one-fourth of the circumference of the gear 'I4.- On each rotation of the shaft I00, the gear sector I08 will rotate the shaft I2 by ninety degrees thus feeding approximately two inches of rope downwardly. In the position shown, the shaft I06 turns counterclockwise and the feeding of the rope and the gauze has just been terminated. At this moment a second gear sector IIO has engaged a rack II2 mounted in guides H4 and I I6. Mounted on the right-hand end of the rack I I 2 is a flexible poker H8. It will be observed that the tooth section I22 on the sector H0 is short and will move the flexible poker H8 into the dotted-line position I20, thereby holding the rope against the ring member 58. As thetooth I22 clears the rack,

.a locking plate I24 engages a concave surface I26 in the rack which has approximately the same radius as has the circumferential edge I28 of the locking plate I24. for a moment and at that moment a third gear sector I30 engages a rack I32, by a short extent of teeth. The rack I32 is fastened to the two knives 54 and 36 which are mounted in grooves such as I36 and I38 in side supports I40 and I42. The length of the teeth in engagement with the rack I32 is such that the knife 86 engages the fixed knife 88 and severs the cotton rope, but the knife 54 stops before engaging the knife 56. Immediately thereafter the teeth I of the sector I I0 engage the balance of the teeth on the rack II2 which forces the flexible poker -I-I8 on through the ring member 58 so that the cotton rope sectionengages the gauze end 50. As this occurs, the teeth I40 on the sector I30 finish driving the knife 54 against the knife 56 which severs the gauze. The poker I I 8 continues to move forwardly and pushes the gauze and the rope upwardly around the curved tube 60 through the opening in the assembling plates at I50. The racks are returned to normal position by means of springs-I52 and I54. The assembling plates at I comprise an upper plate 20a having a hole therethrough and a lower plate 22a. When the poker H8 pushes the cotton section and gauze through this hole, the lower plate 22a pinches the tails of the gauze against the-edge of the hole, all of which is described in detail in Mott, 2,400,250, particularly with respect to its Fig. 24.

This method of making the surgical sponge differs from the preceding one essentially in that the cotton rope section is assembled in the gauze without moving them into horizontal position. The assembling really occurs inside the tube which performs the function which the member 50 in the Mott Patent No. 2,400,250, showed.

The embodiment that has been described, is advantageous to applicant because his existing Mott machines may be adapted to this design by building the unit as shown in Fig. 1 and replacingthe unit shown in Fig. 13 of the Mott patent. The entire transfer table and stitching mechanismis satisfactory in its present form.

However, a new machine is projected in which the transfer table and stitching assembly is laid on its side as illustrated in Fig. 4. This need not be described in detail because the drawing shows the stitching assembly of Fig. Land the ga ze ans cotton ro e a embl a F l. atv right anglesto each other. Shaft I00 drives This holds the poker still 4 4 a shaft IOI at a one-to-one ratio and the ma chine functions as heretofore described.

Having thus described our invention, what we claim as new and useful is:

l. The method of making a globular surgical sponge from a spool of gauze and cotton rope which comprises the steps of feeding downwardly in side-by-side relationship the ends of the gauze and rope so that the rope is adjacent one surface of the gauze and disposed centrally of two sides thereof, of severing an end section of rope and an end section of gauze from the main body of the gauze while concurrently pushing the rope section along a substantially horizontal path against the gauze and into a formative member, pushing the cotton and gauze sections through an assembling plate, and of then fastening the tails of the gauze around the cotton rope core to form a surgical sponge.

2. The method of making a globular surgical sponge from a spool of gauze and cotton rope which comprises the steps of feeding downwardly in side-by-side relationship the ends of the gauze and rope so that the rope is adjacent one surface of the gauze and disposed centrally of two sides thereof, of severing an end section of rope and an end section of gauze from the main body of the gauze while concurrently pushing the rope section along a substantially horizontal path against the gauze and into a formative member, of then converting the movement of the rope surrounded by the gauze from a horizontal movement into a vertical movement, and of thereafter fastening the tails of the gauze around the cotton rope core to form a surgical sponge.

3. The method of making a globular surgical sponge from a strip of gauze and cotton rope which comprises the steps of feeding downwardly in side-by-side relationship-unsevered end sections of gauze and rope disposed at respective ends of a horizontally disposed open-ended tubular member, of pushing the end section of the rope axially against its end of the tube while concurrently severing such end section from the main body of the rope, of then pushing the severed cotton section through the tubular member against the gauze section and thus pushing the gauze section against an end of a second tube in coaxial spaced relation with the first tube while concurrently severing the gauze section from the remainder of its strip, of pushing the cotton and gauze sections through the second tube so as to draw the corners of the gauze around the cotton rope section as tails, pushing the cotton and gauze sections through an assembling plate, and of thereafter securing the tails of the gauze together to form a surgical sponge.

4. The method of making a globular surgical sponge from a strip of gauze and cotton rope which comprises the steps of feeding downwardly in side-by-side relationship unsevered end section of gauze and rope disposed contiguously to respective end of a horizontally disposed openended tubular member, of pushing the end section of the rope into its end of the tubular member while concurrently severin such end section from the main body of the rope, of then pushing the severed cotton section through the tubular member against the gauze section and thus pushing both of them into an end of a second tubular member while concurrently severing the gauze section from the remainder of the gauze strip, of pushing said sections through the second tubular .member so as to draw the corners of the gauze around the cotton rope section as tails, ofthen changing the direction of movement of the rope surrounded by the gauze from the horizontal to vertical, and of thereafter fastening the tails of the gauze around the rope to form a surgical sponge.

5. A machine for making surgical sponges comprising a horizontally positioned tube, means for feeding selected length end sections of a cotton rope and a gauze strip downwardly across the ends respectively of said horizontally positioned tube, a poker movable along the axis of said tube, a second tube having one end thereof in axial alignment with said first tube but spaced therefrom so that the gauzesection may hang between opposed ends of the tubes, knives for severing the cotton and gauze sections while disposed co-axially with the tubes, actuating means for severing said co-axially disposed cotton and gauze sections during horizontal endwise movement of the poker first into and through the first tube and continued movement of the poker through the second tube so as to gather the severed gauze around the severed rope section, means adjacent the opposite end of the second tube for receiving and holding the gauze-wrapped cotton, and means for fastening the gauze around the cotton to form a surgical sponge.

6. A machine for making surgical sponges comprising means for feeding selected length end sections respectively of a cotton rope and of a through the curved tube, knives operable for severing the cotton and the rope sections in the assembling zone, actuating means for concurrently operating the knives and moving the poker in the assembling zone, means for further moving the poker through the curved tube, means at the discharge end of the curved tube for receiving the severed cotton and gauze sections as they are poked therefrom by the poker, and means cooperable with said receiving mean for securing the gauze section about the cotton section.

7. In a surgical sponge producing machine, a frame, a pair of substantially horizontal tubes fixedly mounted upon said frame and having coaxial and contiguously opposed ends, means for intermittently feeding a gauze strip endwise downwardly for disposing a leading end portion of such strip within the space between the contiguous spaced ends of the tubes, severing means operable to sever such end portion from the gauze strip, means for intermittently feeding an elongated piece of filling material endwise to place a leading end portion thereof transversely across the opposite end of one of said tubes, severing means operable to sever such end portion from the filler material piece, an elongated poker, means reciprocally mountingthe poker upon said frame in horizontal co-axial relation with the one tube to facilitate endwise entry of the poker into the one tube through such other end and continued movement of the poker axially through both tubes, means operable to horizontally endwise advance the poker to cause entry thereof into the tubes and alternately withdraw the poker from the tubes, and means for operating the poker operating means and both of said severing means in timed relation with the intermittent feeding of said gauze strip and of said elongated piece of filler material, said operating means being operable to effect sequential operation of the poker and severing means such that the poker approaches the one tube to commence poking the end portion of the filler material into such one tube substantially concurrently with the severing operation of the filler material severing means and force the severed end portion of filler material through the one tube and against the gauze end section for pressing the latter into the other tube substantially concurrently with the operation of the gauze severing means while the poker continues to advance the severed gauze and filler material sections into the other tube while cooperating therewith to wrap the severed gauze piece about the severed section of the filler material, means at the opposite end of said other tube for receiving the gauze piece and retaining the same Wrapped about the filler material section, and means cooperable with said receiving means for permanently fastening the gauze section about the filler material section.

HOWARD C. RIORDANl WILFRED S. STONE.

REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 2,171,572 Kelly Sept. 5, 1939 2,400,250 Mott May 14, 1946 

